Socio-psychological and sociological models for the understanding of disease and health bring into focus influencing factors created by the social action of human beings. What are the social influences on health preservation, the development and social stratification of disease? How do social inequality and social stratification influence health? What role do occupation and unemployment play? What social-demographic determinants are important in medicine? We offer you all this information in the following article—along with all the facts pertinent to exams.

00:00
Okay, let’s get into Spatial Inequality.
00:03
Where do you live? Who surround you?
And is that really equitable? Let’s take a look.
00:09
Residential segregation refers to the separation
of groups into different neighborhoods.
00:15
That’s not a new premise. We understand
we all live in different neighborhoods.
00:19
That’s a common occurrence.
00:21
But now, we’re going to look at what are
some of the drivers behind that right?Residential segregation is most commonly based on
three main drivers that we’re going to talk about.
00:29
The first and probably most obvious
would be is racial differences.
00:33
The second, ethnic differences.
00:35
And third, is socioeconomic drivers or differences.
That includes things like affluence and education.
00:41
Now, we know that when Residential segregation occurs,
it’s not because laws has been enforced.
00:51
Typically, it’s more on social patterns based on
suburbanization, discrimination and personal preference.
00:58
Imagine you are moving to a new city,
and you’re taking a look at the neighborhoods.
01:02
And I’m just going to pick a minority,
your visual minorities.
01:06
So, say you’re Indian. And you’re
going into a predominantly white townbut there is a small sub-population or smaller
little neighborhood of other fellow Indians.
01:17
Now, as a immigrant coming in,
where would you feel most comfortable?I mean, a lot of times your personal
preference would be that‘’I would like to be with other Indians,
so I can communicate.
01:27
I might have access to the
different amenities that I need.
01:29
In that case, that’s more
of personal preference.
01:32
As supposed to, when you come into
a neighborhood and they tell you‘’Well, no, this is where your kind lives
so you’ll be living in that area.”Thats were the difference between
preferences versus discrimination.
01:43
Now, we can actually deal about om math
based on the data that’s available.
01:48
and calculate something
called Index of dissimilarity.
01:51
So, this is the level of segregation,
with zero being total segregationand 100 indicating a perfect
heterogeneous distribution.
02:00
So, at zero we’d have drawn lines.
All of these types of people all over here,All of these types of people over here, and at
a 100, is a nice perfect mix of everybody.
02:09
So, what we know is that levels of residential
segregation increase based onstereotypes, discrimination and social tension.
02:20
When you have the segregation,
and like I said, we can calculate that.
02:26
The more segregation we have the more stereotypes,
the more discriminationand more tension and that makes sense.
Think of two neighborhood,and one neighborhood might not like than
other neighborhood or might have pre-deceivescary types of other neighborhood. And they might
say ‘I don’t want to reallylive there’’.
02:44
And that transitionary area where
this two neighborhoods may be meetor we have some overlap.
02:50
you might see some of the issues
in terms of safety and violence.
02:54
Now, let’s take a look at what happens
when this three variables interact.
03:02
So, when you have these neighborhoods,
whether you’ve had segregationyou can actually create
something called social isolationwhich is you stay within
your group and socially speaking,you’ve created a sub-category
within the broader society.
03:16
And so, you’ve isolated yourself. You’ve created
yourself a little island of individualsthat belong to your social circle.
03:24
And also creates something called
linguistic isolation and culture isolation.
03:28
Now, you see this a lot of times in a
lot of cities around the globe, where they haveLets say at China Town. And a lot of
the signage is in Mandarin or Chinese.
03:39
And you have restaurants, grocery stores
and a lot of the people actually only speakthat language and don’t speak the other language
that is a predominant language for say that city.
03:50
There’s also creates cultural isolation
where the individuals in that culturebasically immolate the same cultures
that they have and their originating country.
03:59
So, I’m using Chinese in China Town as an example.
04:03
So, they might bring some of the cultures
that they have in China to this donor citywhere they have set up a China Town.
04:09
And so, that’s created this little island effect.
04:12
Now, we know that this can increase
the incidence of violence and crimewith surrounding areas because of that potential
tension, and that difference, and discrimination.
04:24
And also within that sub-population, if that
sub-population falls within a lower SES segregatethen you can get this violence as well.
So, these different factors can all escalateneighborhood safety and violence.
04:37
Now, this is not to say that every China Town
has lot of violent and that’s why we have violence.
04:43
We're simply highlight in that while you
create this socially isolated islandsthat have their own culture and their
own norms that differs from those around them,it sparks the potential for conflict and
they also sparks the potential for crime.
05:00
Now, difference between neighborhood
composition may impact accessto law enforcements as well.
05:06
So, back to some of the drivers
behind what’s creating this neighborhoods,one of those was socio-economic status.
05:12
And we know that from our other
discussions that in terms or SES,if you are on the lower end of the SES scale,you tend to have lower paying jobs,
lower quality of life,you tend to have rougher jobs, less education
and less access to social resources.
05:29
and some of those include, things
like police stations and shelters,and actual law enforcement, ensuring safety
to neighborhood versus say a highly affluent area,we have lots of police, you have
lots of shelters, lots of resources there.
05:44
And so, that disparity, that difference can
actually lead to increase in safety and violence issues.
05:51
Now, we’re going to approach
a topic called Environmental justice.
05:56
This refers to the trend that people that are
on a lower on the SES scale have less access toenvironmental assets and higher
presence of negative environmental factor.
06:04
What are some of the
things that I’m talking about?So, on the green side, on the environmental side,
these are assets like things likeparks, screen spaces, bike pass,
places to go take your dog, play with your kidsand also some social supports services.
So linked through that greenery.
06:20
Lot of money generated from the taxes
are put in to creating in this play spacesand these places for you to enjoy yourself.
06:28
Now, coming with that is the ability to do things like‘’Well, hey I have a park, I can go play with my kids,
or I can go for a bike ride, or I can go for a run’’.
06:36
And it’s giving you the opportunity to
actually reinforce the positive health outcomesthat we see with those that
are higher on the SES scale.
06:44
Now, negative environmental factors
can include things like the processing plantfor garbage and dumps, factories,
energy production, transportation hubs,airports, trucks, train stations.
06:56
These tend to follow around areas
where you see lower economic status.
07:02
So, I have this kind of graph for you
so we can kind of make some senseNow, on the X-axis you will see level of SES.
07:09
On the one end you have the affluent
wealthy folks, and a higher on the SES scale.
07:13
and on the other end we have those
settled but lower on the SES scale.
07:16
Now, if you would to graph this
though, you’d see a relationshiplooking at say the environmental assets.
So, this is your parks and green spacesthat we see more of those assets and
individuals that are higher on the SCS scaleand you see less of it and those are
at the lower on the SCS scale.
07:35
And in terms of the negative factors,
things like the factories, the transit, airports,housing around on those broad areas.
That’s not a [inaudible 00:07:43,4] place to live.
07:44
and we see that the negative factors
being much higher on the lower SCS scaleversus the more affluent neighborhoods. We see
lust things like airports and big industrial factories.
07:56
So, this disparity reinforces
what we know in terms of health risksand based on environmental assets,
negative factors and location.
08:06
So, to sum it all up, if you’re lower on
the SES scale you have less access tosort of things that would improve your
quality of life and your health outcomesversus those that are higher on the SES scale.

About the Lecture

The lecture Spatial Inequality (SOC) by Tarry Ahuja, MD is from the course Social Inequality.

Included Quiz Questions

Which of the following describes residential segregation?

Separation of groups by racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences into different neighborhoods

Separation of groups by geographic factors into different neighborhoods

Separation of groups by law into different neighborhoods

No separation of groups into different neighborhoods

Separation of groups based on school allocation into different neighborhoods

A behavioral psychologist is moving to a new city to practice there. While looking at housing, he observes one neighborhood having four green parks with amenities and affable police. Another neighborhood has one park with a strict curfew. Which of the following describes this situation?

Environmental justice

Social justice

Socioeconomic differences

Racial differences

Health disparity

A new house owner chooses to move into an area with others having similar religious belief. What does this contribute to?

Residential segregation

Social isolation

Linguistic isolation

Environmental justice

Social reproduction

Which of the following is NOT a possible consequence of a population having an Index of discrimination of 10?

Equal neighborhood safety in all groups

Cultural isolation

Increased violence between the groups

Increased violence in the lower SES group

More access to environmental protective factors in higher SES group

Which of the following correctly defines spatial inequality?

The unequal amount of resources, services and qualities depending on the location or area such as welfare or medical

The equal amount of resources, services and qualities depending on the location or area such as welfare or medical

The unequal amount of resources depending on the location or area

The unequal amount of services depending on the location or area

The unequal amount of qualities depending on the location or area

Which of the following factors does NOT contribute to residential segregation?

Religion

Ethnic differences

Racial differences

Affluence

Education

Which of the following is not a consequence when there exists an inequality due to stereotypes, discrimination and social tension along with the SES differences?

Decrease in crime and violence with surrounding groups and lower SES segregates subpopulations

Social, linguistic and cultural isolation

Violence and crime with surrounding groups

Increase in crime in lower SES segregates subpopulations

Increase in violence in lower SES segregates subpopulations

Which of the following defines environmental justice?

The trend that people with a lower SES have less access to environmental assets and higher presences of negative environmental aspects

The trend that people with a lower SES have no access to environmental assets and higher presences of negative environmental aspects

The trend that people with a lower SES have greater access to environmental assets and higher presences of negative environmental aspects

The trend that people with a lower SES have less access to environmental assets and lower presences of negative environmental aspects.

The trend that people with a lower SES have no access to environmental assets and no presences of environmental aspects.

Author of lecture Spatial Inequality (SOC)

Tarry Ahuja, MD

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